They say every writer leaves a little of themselves behind.
But some pens don't ask permission.
They take what's left.
---
It came wrapped in yellowed pages. Brittle. Silent.
The kind of paper that remembers hands.
I don't know who sent it. No note. No return label.
Only the pen.
Black lacquer. Gold trim. Ordinary.
The kind of thing you'd find in a forgotten drawer, beside old receipts and broken keys.
But when I held it, my fingertips prickled.
Like something just beneath my skin had started listening.
---
I tested it on a napkin.
The ink ran red.
Not ink.
Too dark. Too thick. Too… tired.
It didn't pool.
It sank.
The words came fast. Faster than I could read.
And when I stopped, I didn't remember what I'd written.
The napkin told me:
> He sat alone in the attic.
The door had been locked for days.
I looked up.
The attic door was open.
I hadn't touched it.
---
The pen wrote stories.
Not mine.
Stories of people I'd never met.
Of places that don't exist in sunlight.
Of moments I haven't lived—but feel like I almost did.
And always, they ended just before they should:
> She reached the end of the hall and found herself.
But the other her had teeth.
> He broke the seal.
The thing inside didn't.
I read one of them aloud.
Once. Only once.
The walls didn't echo.
They listened.
---
I tried to stop. Wrapped the pen in cloth. Salted the drawer.
Whispered Elias's cautions to the wood.
But the next morning, the pages were back.
Scattered like leaves.
Each written in red.
Each in my hand.
One page just said:
> You've been writing for days.
You only think this is the first.
I didn't sleep that night.
Or the next.
---
Elias wouldn't touch it.
He wouldn't even speak near it.
He said the pen writes truths we're not supposed to know.
Said it cost him two names and a decade.
Elias called it one of the Four.
He wouldn't tell me the others.
Only looked at my hands and said,
"Don't bleed on it again."
He gave me a sealing phrase. I wrote it down.
The ink on that page turned black, then vanished.
So did the phrase.
The pen wrote another line:
> The man who knew the word forgot.
The man who seeks it never will.
I haven't tried to remember since.
---
I keep the pen locked in a cage of cold iron, buried in linen marked with glyphs.
Veil-cloth layered six times.
Silver clasp sealed with bone wax.
But every few nights, there's a new page waiting.
Still warm. Still breathing.
They don't make noise.
But I know they're there.
Sometimes I recognize the story.
Sometimes I realize it hasn't happened yet.
And once—
I woke with a line written across my palm.
Faint, thin, raised like a scar.
> I am still writing.
There was no ink.
Only skin.
---
I don't use it anymore.
But I feel it watching me.
Waiting for the day I'll need to write something I can't say aloud.
And when I do…
it won't wait for permission.